


The Songs of Scripps

by Petruschin



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, History Boys (2006), History Boys - Bennett
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 20:00:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11043291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petruschin/pseuds/Petruschin
Summary: The boys' Muggle Literature classes become a lot more interesting when notorious mugglephobe Draco Malfoy stumbles in. Hector doesn't seem to mind. Posner minds a lot. Scripps is trying to get over how gorgeous the blonde is. Dakin looks all too pleased with these progressions (when he isn't sneaking off to have long chats with his History of Magic teacher.) Alternatively, the History Boys find out what their patronuses are, and it gets a little melancholy.





	The Songs of Scripps

1\. Dear David Posner,

It’s been a while since I’ve written to you, and for that I give my apologies. 

Today, I saw a silver albatross floating on a lake. I don’t know who cast it. 

I wanted to tell you, that I started to move away; I didn’t want to look at it. It reminded me of him too much. Tom stopped me though. He always stops me. Anyway, as we stood there in that park staring at its silver-slow motion on the water, I felt all the things you’d expect me to. I felt lost, lonely and so incomplete. Tom was there though, of course, that made me feel better, made it bearable.

It looked too big, too majestic- like a massive insult. Like turning a knife into an almost closed wound and forcing it open again. 

But then the patronus was joined by another, of exactly the same type. A second albatross appeared on the lake’s surface and approached the first. I still could not see the casters, and I’m still kind of glad of that. I don’t want to know. 

I just know that watching the two together made me feel a kind of warmth. The whole atmosphere changed, and something rose in my chest. It was hope, Pos. 

He misses you, I’m sure. I’m not sure about how much he misses me, but I’m so sure that you meant and still mean the world to him. There is always hope, Posner.

Yours sincerely,

Stuart Dakin.

 

2\. “Mate, I’m sorry, but you’re saying it wrong.”  
“No, I’m fucking not.” Dakin spat as he tossed his copy of Othello onto Scripps’ bedcovers. “There is no wrong- it’s a bloody script! I can say the lines however I like.” Said the half-discouraged Slytherin as he ran his hands through his still-wet hair.  
“Oh, come on! Where’s the verve? The brio?!” Scripps leant forward to pick up Dakin’s script, and nudged him encouragingly on the leg.  
“Fuck your brio.” Dakin pouted, shoving back at him.  
“Listen,” Scripps commanded whilst moving to sit up a bit straighter. “It’s easy; ‘To see you here before me. Oh my soul’s joy: If after every tempest, come such calms, may the winds blow, till they have wakened death!”  
Dakin stared at his friend’s gesticulating hands disapprovingly for a noticeable moment before he let out with a dry puff: “I think I’ve been cast in the wrong part mate.”  
“You haven’t been cast! You’re only running bloody lines with me!”  
“Oh my souls joy?!’ That’s not really me, sorry.” Dakin shrugged before rolling off the bed, grabbing his abandoned towel off the floor and pausing momentarily. “I like to think of myself as much more melancholy.” He mused before turning to head towards the dorm’s passageway and down to the Ravenclaw common room.  
“Don’t just fuck off!” Scripps quickly hopped off the end of his bed and grabbed the end of Dakin’s towel with both hands. “Who am I meant to run lines with?”  
Dakin was forced to whip back around by the towel that Scripps was now too holding, and scowled at his friend as they stood in silence, both holding the damp piece of green material, each boy tugging slightly at his own end.  
“Let go.” Dakin demanded. “Don’t be stupid, Don.”  
“No.”  
“I have better things to do than this!” Dakin tried to pull the towel out of his friend’s hands, but it was to no avail. A smirk was starting to spread onto Scripps’ face.  
“No you don’t, sweetheart.”  
Scripps gave a particularly harsh tug that led Dakin hurtling forward before he could regain his footing. Dakin raised his eyes slowly from the towel now hanging from Scripps’ hands, to the unbearable smirking face, with one eyebrow raised in a declaration of a clear win.  
“You bastard.”  
Scripps shrugged in a mock humble manner. “Quidditch training paying off; fancy me being stronger than Stuart Dakin.”  
“You aren’t.”  
“We could settle that with another towel tug-of-war, if you dare?” Scripps beamed.  
“Not likely. Akthar will walk in and make some remark about us looking like some old couple hanging up their dirty laundry, I’m sure.” Dakin breathed before turning to head back towards the door.  
“Good point. Come on, Stu, sit the fuck down.”  
He paused, blew out an annoyed breath, and turned back towards his best friend. “Fine. But just a couple of more scenes, please, my dear Desdemona.”  
Scripps gave a snort, and tossed the towel back onto the floor, where it had been left in the first place. “Sure.”  
“And since you did ask so nicely for me to “sit the fuck down.”  
“You love it really.”  
Dakin and Scripps both moved to reclaim their previous positions on top of Scripps’ ink-blue covers, with Scripps flopped on his stomach at the bottom of the bed whilst Dakin sat with his legs crossed, back propped up against the pillows. Both of the young boys were used to Dakin’s small strops and Scripps’ nagging, and would, in fact, soon grow to find comfort in these longed-for familiarities. The old copy of Othello was tossed between the pair for the next couple of hours, amongst laughter and smiles and the occasional pillow throwing when one took their habitual sarcasm too far. Scripps’ had always thought Dakin was indeed the prettiest Desdemona to have ever graced Shakespeare’s pages, and often told him so, just to get the exact same pissed-off reaction each time.   
It was a comfortable evening of reading and chatting, and only after, when Akthar had indeed entered the dorm and told them what a pair of pensioners they looked, and Dakin had buggered off, giving Scripps a hair ruffle before he left towards his own Slytherin common room, and only after Scripps had casted “Nox.” on all the lights left in the room, and tossed Othello onto his bedside table, and only after he had begun to watch the specks of dust floating high above his head - weaving in and out of visibility as they danced amongst the streaks of moonlight spilling through the high shuttered windows, and almost wished he was a part of that silent drama that unfolded above his head each night– only after, did he realise just how incomparably and unquestionably incomplete he really was.

2\. And incomplete was really never enough.   
He loved his friends, he really did. He especially enjoyed seeing Posner every morning in the Great Hall. His gentle voice, pretty quotations – this morning it was Robert Frost; “Leaf subsides to leaf.” – and lilting laughter complimented Scripps’ mood in the morning perfectly. He loved looking at Posner in the yellow morning light, with the odd streak of gold reflected off a plate or goblet embossing his cheekbone or eyelid, making him all the more glorious over the taking of toast and tea. He loved how Posner would sometimes have a new book for him to brush through over breakfast, how there would be soft pencilled notes in the margins lettings Scripps know where the really good bits were, and he loved walking to his first class of the day, sometimes arm in arm, with his friend. Hell, if he wasn’t so this ridiculously fond of his best friend he would have hardly agreed to play Desdemona in the new Muggle Literatures production, which Posner happened to run.  
He also really did love Dakin. He had known him practically all his life - their two families were good friends and “dinner companions.” Dakin had known about the wizarding world before Scripps did, with Dakin’s parents drilling the rules and culture and ideals into Dakin since birth, whilst Scripps’ parents had wanted him to “find his own way” a bit more. He guesses that’s how he stumbled into a devout religious attitude in his late childhood- he had Christianity to believe in before God was blown out of the picture with the arrival of a certain letter at the age of eleven. Either way, Dakin had known about Scripps- the whole Scripps- before he had even fully known himself and for this reason he thinks he will always feel like Dakin is one step ahead – holding the answers, before Scripps could ever even hope to learn the questions.  
So yes, he was satisfied. He was happy. But as all readers of great literature know, such as Donald Scripps, that is hardly ever enough. People have a very human tendency to stutter and hesitate before more, to hold a secret throbbing ache for complicated and dangerous. To spit at simple and uncomplicated and dive head first into the dangerous and libertine complexities that are outside the range of everyday life. Of course, Scripps had never been that brave.  
Hence why he was only staring at the boy clad in Slytherin robes across the Arithmancy lesson from him. Notes all but abandoned, he had instead decided to wonder why on earth Draco Malfoy had thought it was at all even remotely acceptable for him to wear fucking eye liner to class today. Was he trying to distract the whole student body? Did he want to drag everyone’s grades down so much that the entire grade boundary would move down, making his grades comparably better? Because holy fuck, Scripps was getting no work done right now.  
He seemed to not have been the only one to have noticed, either. Pansy Parkinson had seemed to find it particularly “bad ass,” as well as enticing, as she was peering to her left every ten seconds to admire her daring and careless friend. Blaise had just shrugged when Draco had swanned up to the pair of them at the start of the lesson, seeming to just role with the punches of Draco’s increasingly “push every available boundary” attitude. Theodore Nott on the other hand, looked pretty uncomfortable to be seen with Draco right now.  
Scripps wondered why the hell he didn’t look that good in eyeliner. The one time he had tried it on – he had been experimenting with make up between one of the Othello rehearsals when Posner had wandered in on him with eye liner and some heavy blusher on and carefully explained to him that they were going for a more androgynous Desdemona this year - not one in drag. In fact the whole bloody play was compromised of agender characters. Which, of course, Scripps had known. He was just curious. Turns out he looks like a wanker in eyeliner. He bet Dakin could fucking pull it off. Scripps was continuing to stare when he felt the nudge of an elbow in his left side.  
“Beware of jealously, my lord, it is the monster that doth mock the meat it feeds on...”  
“Fuck off, Dakin.”  
\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3\. Posner, Scripps, Lockwood and Timms had requested a series of “Muggle Literatures” lessons in their second year – which is the dubious name the Hogwarts staff had given those particular time tabled lessons. To Scripps, all literature was just, well, literature. There need not be a distinguisher between “muggle” and “non-muggle” or “wizard” writing, but take what you can, and all that. It is true that they did spend most of their time in those lessons dissecting literature that was written by muggles, but that was only because it had no other place in the school syllabus. They were, unfortunately, the only set of pupils in the school attending these lessons, which acted more as a club, if you will, and was open to everybody – except for a pair of Ravenclaw girls in year seven who sometimes sat near the back and hardly ever contributed.  
That cold afternoon, Mr. Hector had just finished rapturously repeating Hardy’s The Convergence of the Twain when he noticed Dakin’s absence.   
“With Mr Irwin, sir.” Timms informed.  
“Ah, of course.”  
Irwin was one of the only other teachers in Hogwarts to have some real knowledge and passion for Muggle Literature. Dakin had seemed to be spending more and more time seeking out his attention and company, if his bravado in their History of Magic lessons was anything to go by. Scripps seemed to doubt at this moment, and not for the first time, that what Dakin admired in Irwin the most was not his expansive knowledge of both the muggle and the wizarding worlds.  
“These last two verses, boys, that’s really where the kick is-”  
Scripps noticed how eagerly Posner was listening to Hector’s every word, with glistening eyes and a chin buried in his hands.  
“-Or sign that they were bent  
By paths coincident  
On being anon twin halves of one august event,  
Till the Spinner of the Years  
Said "Now!" And each one hears,  
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.”  
Perhaps it was the distinct lack of Dakin, or the way that Hector was raising his voice in that passionate manner, with eyes that looked like the poetry had allowed his pupils to bore stars and galaxies, or the look on Posner’s face- eyes shining, as if Hector had allowed him to do the very same- but from that moment on Scripps couldn’t get the idea of “paths coincident” out his mind. Like it meant something; held some particular importance to his life. Like any good metaphor, really, this one had just stuck. In any case, Scripps often wished he could be as brave as Dakin, or even Posner- more than just sometimes. Do something new, break the circle, change the path, make life wider.  
\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
4\. “You are so fucked.”  
“Actually, no, as you know, I am not ‘fucked.’ And have never been so.”  
Lockwood snorted from a couple of seats down the table from Scripps, and Posner simply rolled his large eyes in response across from where he sat. Dinner in the Great Hall with the whole group was usually one of Scripps’ favourite parts of his day, but with the way Dakin was going on it was rapidly declining in his mental estimations.  
“Okay, alright. But this whole “Oh, Draco, please love me despite my muggle tendencies and blood status” thing is actually fucking you over so much.” Dakin declared smugly as he spread some butter onto his piece of baguette.  
“And how would you know anything about it?” Posner snapped, quickly jumping to his friend’s defence.  
“Because.”  
“Because?”  
“Oh my god, Posner. Because he barely gets any work done in Arithmancy or Potions because of sodding Malfoy.”   
Scripps’ face rapidly turned a shade of red that was a combination of angry and embarrassed. He was going to have to castrate Dakin soon if he didn’t drop the subject. Posner looked from Scripps to Dakin and had soon caught on to this progression of Scripps’.  
“Drop it, Dakin. He is going to castrate you- you can see it in his eyes.” Dakin simply laughed in response, clearly feeling unthreatened by his group of friends.  
“Besides,” began Posner rather musically, “I can’t imagine you are getting much work done in History of Magic.”  
“That’s totally true, I can attest to that!” Timms declared, joining in. Dakin sent him warning look. “Sorry mate, but Posner’s right. I sit by you in lessons and hardly ever see you write anything down! It’s a wonder Irwin doesn’t get more pissed off about it.”  
“Well, I’m getting straight A’s- so I must be doing something right.” Dakin murmured under his breath, causing Akthar, who sat to his left, to snigger knowingly.  
\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
5\. The day had sunk slowly towards evening again, and here they were, splayed across Scripps’ bed, going over lines. It was quiet for a moment, whilst Dakin was reading over some lines of Act Four that had particularly interested him. He was lying on his back, the back of his head slightly buried in Scripps’ covers. A small stitch of skin had creased in between his dark eyebrows- one only that manifested itself in Dakin’s moments of intense curiosity.   
Scripps noticed the shadows cast across Dakin’s face, making his lower lip look slightly darker than this upper one, and highlighting the angle of his near perfect cheekbones. He realised that as much as Posner suited the golden morning light, Dakin was never more in his element- never looked more beautiful- than within this shattered darkness. He looked dormant as he lay on the bed in a perfect stillness, like something you knew had force and strength and brute instinct that could crack the earth under your feet if you got too close, but you never knew when. Only Dakin chose each time he would leave his beautiful, stagnant state of observation, and plunge himself into the progression of life around him, and change the course. It was a skill that stretched in capacity from perfectly altering the direction of a conversation to making men crumble to their knees- if Dakin really wanted them to.  
“You really annoyed me at dinner today, you know.” Scripps whispered with his head still tilted towards Dakin, staring in slight wonder.  
After a moment, Dakin tore his eyes away from Othello in order to meet his friend’s gaze. “I know.”  
“Are you going to apologize?”  
“Did you want me to?”  
“Not really.”  
Dakin observed Scripps with mild curiosity for a moment, as if sizing up whether he was really worth investigating, before continuing to look back up at the text he moved to hold above his head.  
Scripps really had had a shit day. And that was not all uninfluenced by Dakin and his need to be the centre of attention at dinner- at the cost of some of Scripps’ dignity. Scripps deserved something, he told himself. Something – anything – it just had to be fucking new, and different. The ‘consummation coming!’ A new path.   
Right now, if he wanted, he could put his hand up to Dakin’s stubbled jaw, tilt it towards his own face, and kiss him. He didn’t think Dakin would even object- it’s not like they hadn’t messed around before- and today Dakin had been too much himself, too arrogant, too quick-witted and perfect, too damn admirable and lovable not to be kissed. He was designed to be kissed, right now, in this cracked darkness, by his all the more cracked and shattered best friend.  
But fearing this was lunacy, an idea romanticized under this particled-light of the moon, he didn’t. He remained as inactive as Dakin, but not out of choice and control- such qualities he envied in his friend- but out of shyness and indecision.   
\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
6\. And in the warm light of the morning, sitting by Posner over that daybreak scent of words and coffee, it became clear to him that his answer could have indeed never been found in someone else. However art-like and statuesque, Dakin had not been sculpted into existence for Scripps to learn from. Much unlike other art forms, he was no didactic medium from which Scripps was to gain some divine knowledge and understanding.  
He was a boy, an imperfect and complex teenager, as frequent in his yearnings as was Scripps’ himself.   
The only thing he could gain from Dakin, right now, was- at the opportune moment- the wisdom to act on them.  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
7\. Three years ago, they had all learnt to cast their patronuses for the first time. The trick was to learn the correct incantation, and then think of your most powerful happy memory, or feeling. Dakin was the first to cast one successfully- a rather embarrassingly showy peacock, in fact-, and Posner was the last. It took three weeks into their Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons for Posner to finally send a turtle dove skirting about the high ceilings of the classroom.   
“Finally, mate.” Scripps said as he placed his hand on the other boy’s shoulder. “What took you so long?”  
“I guess I was just thinking of the wrong kind of happiness.” Posner mused curiously whilst watching his patronus settle on a wooden beam above their heads.  
“I didn’t know there was a wrong kind.”  
Posner broke the direction of his gaze to meet Scripps’ eyes. His tone has been melancholy, but he seemed happy. He had to be, Scripps’ thought- the patronus was still materialised above them. Scripps wanted to ask what Posner had been thinking about these past few weeks that brought about no result, what kind of happiness Scripps could tell he was now mentally squashing. Even more so, he wanted to ask what had changed, what his new thoughts were centred on. But Fourth Year Scripps was just as prone to inaction as Seventh Year Scripps, so he simply let the thoughts drift off into his mental abyss. The two boys turned back to look at the dove.  
“It’s beautiful, Pos. Are you happy with it?”  
“They usually come in pairs.”  
“So do albatross’s. I’ve been reading about them. They mate for life.”  
The dove started to nibble on the wooden beam at its feet, quietly chirping.  
“Then maybe we should be asking them if they’re happy instead.”  
The dove dissipated into thin air, and Scripps simply stared at his blue-eyed friend in wonder. Moments like these, moments when Posner would say something so startlingly true, and new; when he made you think about something in the complete opposite way- flipped the world on its head- Scripps never knew what to say. In Posner’s moments of total clarity about the world around him, Scripps never felt more estranged from him. He was something that could not be reached in those moments pressed between the seconds.   
But the moment passed. Dakin came striding up to Posner to offer his congratulations on finally reaching the same point that Dakin himself had been “nailing for weeks”, and the world kept on turning for all of them.  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
8\. On a particularly cold Thursday afternoon, in the middle of April, a circle was broken- however small. Fifteen minutes into their routine Muggle Literatures lesson, there was a knock at the door. Most boys having conceived that it was Dakin turning up late from a rather lengthy and laborious conversation with his History teacher, the knock was not answered immediately.  
“O villainy! Let the door the locked! Treachery! Seek it out.” Hector cried out with passion. Lockwood moved towards the door but hesitated before moving to open it.  
“It’s probably Dakin, sir. No rush.”  
“Ah, yes. If he wishes to turn up late to our lessons, than I’m sure we can help his delay a little longer.” Another knock sounded at the door, yet Hector tried to disguise the noise with his bellowing voice – “Knocks at the door? In literature. The Trial, for instance, begins with a knock. Anybody?”  
“The person from Porlock.” Akthar offered, clearly enjoying the idea of a conversation at Dakin’s expense.   
“Yes.”  
“Don Giovanni: the Commendatore.” Posner said between hunched shoulders, eyes glued to Hector’s machinations for the entirety of the game.  
“Excellent.” Hector complimented a now glowing Posner.  
“Behold I stand at the door and knock. Revelations.” Scripps chipped in, feeling slightly proud at his contribution in a lesson which he had entered thinking that there was no innovation or inspiration to be pulled out of him on an afternoon such as this. The answer, however, went unnoticed by the rest of his classmates, as the door swung open after a muffled “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” and a rather pronounced “Alohamora.”   
A pregnant silence washed around the room as each boy, and Hector, took in the Slytherin standing at the door who was looking rather confused.  
“Where’s Stuart?”  
After another slight pause, Hector spoke up. “We thought you were him, my boy.”  
“Oh. He said he would be here.”  
“Well, by all means, take his seat. Malfoy, is it?”  
“That’s me.” Draco said confidently, having picked himself up after a slight confusion at first. Scripps noted the fact that he looked almost as good as Dakin did in his Slytherin Quidditch uniform. Better, in fact. Though, he was rather disappointed at the lack of eye liner – but realised that applying eye make-up probably wasn’t top of Malfoy’s list after a Quidditch practise.   
Draco moved past most of the desks, throwing Akthar- a fellow Slytherin- a small smile. Akthar responded in the like, however, it was Posner that Draco decided to sit beside. Perhaps he simply wanted a seat upfront, but Posner did not look all too satisfied with this decision. Scripps knew why, of course he knew why. He caught Posner’s eyes and offered him a sympathetic smile- realising all too well how much Posner despised Draco’s prejudices that he had become infamous for within his first year of arriving at Hogwarts.  
However, Posner rippled, but didn’t break. He sat quietly in his seat and waited for the events to unfold.  
“Malfoy, any particular reason you’ve decided to join us today? Your first time in seven years, I believe!”  
Draco sized up the man in front of him, and narrowed his eyes. Not in disapproval, but in intense but momentary curiosity. He seemed to see something in Hector’s muggle-suit clad being that surprised him for a second. Something that made him want to open up.   
“I came across a poem. In the Muggle section of the library.”  
“You, mate?” Akthar laughed. “Have you gone wonky? You’ve never gone there in your whole bloody school career.”  
“Ah, change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men.” Hector chuckled.  
“… Yeah, what your teacher said, Akthar.”  
Posner turned his head at this, and regarded Draco with a little less than disgust.  
“Well, let us hear this poem, Malfoy.”  
“You want me to recite?  
“If it doesn’t pain you too much.”  
Reciting poetry, prose, script, the Prayer Book, singing, acting, playing instruments and any other type of expression you can think of was definitely the norm in these lessons. Scripps, although diffident in some other areas of his life, certainly was as involved as the rest of the boys in these activities- although he often took the less loquacious role of playing the overture on the piano. That is, unless, Posner wanted to do some acting with him, which he always agreed to do out of the pure joy of being across from the golden-haired boy when he came into his element. Scripps could not, however, imagine Draco Malfoy doing such a thing.  
It didn’t seem to bother the Slytherin however, as he shrugged and huffed a rather secure “Sure,” as he went to stand at the front of the classroom, Hector settling on top of a desk that was stacked to the side. Draco cleared his throat;  
“The sunlight on the garden  
Hardens and grows cold.  
We cannot cage the minute,  
Within its nets of gold.  
When all is told,   
We cannot beg for pardon.”  
“Ah, yes, it’s a MacNiece. Good choice, lovely. Continue.”  
Draco nodded and breathed before beginning again.   
“Our freedom as free lances  
Advances towards its end;  
The earth compels upon it.  
Sonnets and birds descend;  
And soon, my friend,  
We shall have no time for dances.”  
“Okay, that’s enough.” Hector said as he clapped it hands together.  
“Did I do anything wrong?”  
“No, that was perfectly lovely. Any thoughts boys?”  
“It was a good delivery!” Timms shouted from near the back of the classroom.  
Scripps thought he had just heard the understatement of the year. Draco’s voice whilst reading poetry was mesmerising. He possessed none of the showy and romantic gestures and trembling voice that Hector often implemented, but instead spoke heavily, like he’d given each word thought before letting them glide off his tongue. He could have sworn that for those thirty or so seconds, symphonies burst through his brain at the sound of that voice, like milk and honey and paradise.  
“Okay, but what’s it about?” Draco questioned with a furred brow. “I get that it’s about endings. The end of a golden era, or something.”  
“Yes.” Hector agreed.  
“But I know there’s more.” Draco went on. “Something’s missing.”  
“It’s about time.” Scripps offered abruptly.  
Draco regarded Scripps for the first time since he had entered the classroom. There was a slight sign of recognition shadowing his features. “I know.”  
“No, it’s about the certainty of it. And about the sheer uncertainty of everything else.” Scripps was slightly bewildered at speaking to Draco for what must have been his first real conversation. He made sure to keep eye contact. “Like, how the only thing we can rely on is time. Everything else dies, or is eroded away. The sunlight, the earth, the gardens, friends, dances. They’re all just for now. Time is the only point in which we humans can depend. Which, of course, is rather depressing as that seems to flies by for us too. In the end, though, it is our only companion.”  
“That is rather dispiriting.”  
“Sorry.”  
“No, no. I like it. Thank you.” Draco corrected, with a look in his eyes like he was drowning and Scripps had just offered him a glass of water, but Draco was ready to take it anyway. It was perplexing, Draco was perplexing. And Scripps was becoming rapidly fixated.  
The lesson continued for a short while after Draco had returned to his seat, and Hector had praised Scripps on his response, or, at least, Scripps had thought it was praise. What Hector has actually supplied was a rather riddlesome gobbit.   
Draco hadn’t shown much interest in Scripps for the rest of lesson, and when the session had ceased he only addressed Akthar on his way out, much as he did when he had entered. That didn’t matter to Scripps though. The devilish dust above his head held no entrancement for Scripps that night; not one minute was spent admiring its sweeping ballet as he laid in bed. No, Scripps wanted to be a part of something else much, much more.  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
9\. He couldn’t wait to grace the fall.   
“Where were you yesterday?” Posner asked Dakin during the following morning’s breakfast.  
“Like you need to ask,” quipped Lockwood. “You’re becoming predictable, Stu.”  
“Am I fuck.” Dakin grumbled into his cereal.   
“So you weren’t pestering Irwin?” Lockwood inquired with one raised eyebrow.  
“Ah.” Posner supplied, throwing a knowing look to both Dakin and Lockwood.  
“No, not “Ah.” I was not pestering him. We were getting to know each other a bit.” Dakin supplied, receiving snorts from both Lockwood and Timms.  
“How quaint. Scripps, you’ve been replaced mate.”   
“Happily.” Scripps said almost under his breath, earning him a rather intrigued look from Dakin. The truth was, he wasn’t really focused on the current conversation going on between his best friends. He had only started to listen because he had heard Posner speaking- an event rather more infrequent than hearing the rest of their voices and one Scripps usually rated quite highly as a result.  
“Well, you weren’t missed.” Timms declared rather enthusiastically, waving a bit of hot toast around as he spoke. “We had a rather rousing reading from none other than Draco Malfoy.” Timms chattered, punctuating the end of his sentence with a rather loud crunch into his toast.  
“Well, I know that, don’t I?”  
“You do?” Scripps queried, with his chin almost tucked into his neck and eyes wide.  
“Told him to go, didn’t I?”  
“Why?” Scripps entreated.  
Dakin paused, and put his spoon down in order to look Scripps straight in the eyes. Scripps realised it was the first time he had really looked at Dakin in this way since the night when he had wanted to kiss him again. Dakin raised his eyebrows, and Scripps did the same in response.   
Dakin laughed a little under his breath. “Malfoy, he’s… going through some stuff. Fancies a change. So I pointed him in your direction.”  
“His direction?” Posner exclaimed. “Why would you do that, Dakin? Malfoy is detestable.”  
“Scripps doesn’t seem to think so.”  
Scripps moved his eyes towards his food, and fiddled around with his porridge, actively avoiding Posner’s questioning stares. Luckily, Dakin saved him from needing to supply a response to such a look.  
“Look, Pos, if you can stand me then you can stand him. Simple. He’s just a Slytherin.”  
“A Slytherin with some serious blood prejudices.”  
“At least you’re half blood.”  
“That’s really not the point, Dakin.”  
Dakin shrugged and huffed a sigh in response, and the table fell silent. A few minutes later, Scripps dared a look in Posner’s direction. A shard of light was dancing off a goblet and embossing his cheekbone with a layer of gold, a moment among many that Scripps usually cherished. But, in the cold morning air stirred from that conversation, it simply made Posner look all the more devastating.  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
10\. Three Years Ago.  
“An albatross.” Dakin noted. Scripps had just cast his patronus- the first time Dakin and Akthar decided to sit with him and the rest of the boys in the Great Hall, despite the set system of house tables. Smiles, laughter, warmth and the scratch of pencils on homework. And utter completion- across the Black Lake. Dakin had wanted to see what it was, having been dismissed from that particular Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson due to how very fair ahead he was with that particular part of the syllabus. Scripps had never seen his patronus on a body of water before, but for some reason he knew he wanted to. So, this is where he brought Dakin in order to show him.  
“Correct.”  
“It’s funny.”  
“What?”  
“Well,” Dakin said, shifting his folded arms around a bit, “they are a Christian religious symbol, aren’t they. To muggles, that is.”  
“Oh.” Scripps muttered under his breath, looking contemplatively at the silver apparition now fading on the black waters’ surface.  
“Well, it’s weird, isn’t it? You used to be very religious, before we came here.”  
“A devout Christian indeed I was.”   
Scripps regarded Dakin and saw the stitch between his eyebrows that signalled the intense curiosity that Scripps was beginning to feel familiar with.  
“What are you thinking, Dakin?”  
“Nothing.”  
“Patronus’ reflect many sides of our personalities, right?”  
“They do.”  
Scripps reached out and touched Dakin’s shoulder. “So it’s nothing to be puzzled over?”  
Dakin looked back across to Scripps and met his eyes. “I just didn’t realise you still thought about that stuff, is all.”  
“Well, I don’t really. Who needs God when you’ve got Dumbledore? And Dumbledore lets you wank.” Scripps quipped, causing a laugh from Dakin, all traces of serious thought fading from the boy’s handsome features.  
“Yup- probably loves the idea. Fucking nancy. We love him really, though.”  
“Did you just call the most powerful wizard of our time a nancy?”  
“That’s what he is, right?”  
“You probably shouldn’t be using that word though.”  
There was a momentary silence in which Dakin looked directly at Scripps, wanting to know what he had meant by that last sentence. “Why?”  
Scripps loved his best friend; and not just for his personality. He loved his dark hair, his angular cheekbones, his stubbled jaw line, his looks beyond his years. But they were fifteen. And Scripps new that just because he expected something from Dakin did not mean he was going to get it, and he knew that Dakin was not yet the person he owed himself to be. So Scripps let it drop, instead of touching a rather particular nerve. And so the winds blew over the lake, and the waves rippled, but did not break.  
\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
11\. Draco Malfoy attended exactly five more Muggle Literature lessons before the circle broke once again. Scripps wondered whether the sole reason for Draco’s coming was really Hector- the Slytherin had seemed to become attached to the man. Perhaps he found his muggle tendencies oddly fascinating, or whether, as Scripps had later guessed, sensed some inherent sadness in his teacher that drew him in.  
He did, actually, engage with Scripps in those lessons, although Dakin was usually the boy he chose to spend most of his time with out of the whole group. As for Scripps, he was becoming very locked on to Malfoy.   
“Do you like Hardy, then?” Malfoy questioned Scripps, leaning over him from behind and peering at the book Scripps had open on the desk. The very near possibility of physical contact was playing on Scripps’ mind, and he saw Dakin peering at the pair of them from the opposite side of the classroom.  
“His poetry, yeah.”  
Draco sat down besides Scripps and started flipping through the anthology that had been resting on the desk. Dakin was not the only one seemingly interested at the exchange, with Posner looking on in a sort of disappointed acceptance.   
“What’s wrong with his novels? Not depressing enough for you?” Malfoy said with a small laugh, as his glance darted between Scripps’ eyes and the book in front of him.   
“Why do you say that?” Scripps said slightly uncomfortably, shuffling slightly in his seat.  
“You seem to have a sort of weary fatalism when it comes to looking at literature. Or so I’ve noticed.”  
Scripps looked up at this, straight into Draco’s eyes. The look was received with an unmistakable Malfoy confidence and a small but infuriating smirk. At least he’d been paying attention, Scripps thought. He has begun to wonder why Malfoy had barely spoken to him at all even though Dakin had apparently “pointed” him in his direction.   
“Not that you look weary.” Malfoy amended.  
Scripps laughed at this, and snatched back his anthology from the Slytherin’s hands. “Thanks. Hardy is fatalistic though, extremely so.”  
“Not in a weary, negative way though.”  
“No?”  
“No. He is more of a, that’s the way things are, type of guy. He sees the “Spinner of the Years” or the “President of the Immortals”, he sees these forces that control our lives, beyond our control, but doesn’t complain. It isn’t good, or bad, its just the way things are. “Like wanton flies to boys as we are to the Gods- they kill us for their sport.” King Lear. Do you see?”  
“You’ve learnt a lot in six lessons.”  
“Been keeping count?” Draco laughed. “Well, its’s interesting, right?”  
“And you sound like Hector.”  
Draco paused at that, and for a moment Scripps had thought he had said the wrong thing. Except Draco’s eyes only drifted to the tired man sitting at his desk, and back to Scripps. “Good.” He managed, and then once again. “Good.”  
“Good?” Scripps asked, sounding rather bewildered at Malfoy’s cryptic manner.  
“I’ll see you round, yeah?” Draco said, and laid a hand on Scripps arm for a moment that felt so concentrated that it may as well have been an answered prayer. Then, he left, returning to his seat beside Dakin, whilst Scripps was simply left with a few questioning stares from his best friends.


End file.
